Supporting Jesus Christ Oil Paintings
Free to read, funded by reproductions, edited by one person
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What that costs is mostly time, and the time goes somewhere fairly specific in a catalogue built around a narrative sequence.
Where the hours actually go
Placing a picture in the sequence
Every work has to be assigned to an episode, and the title is unreliable. Deciding whether a supper is Cana, the Last Supper or Emmaus means reading the picture: the jars, the loaf, the gesture of blessing, whether the guests recognise him.
Records that do not exist
Works in parish churches and religious houses often have no published catalogue record at all. Establishing a date or a support for them means chasing a diocesan inventory or a conservation report rather than calling an API.
Cycles that have been broken up
Predellas and altarpieces were routinely dismembered and sold panel by panel. Reassembling a sequence across four collections on three continents is done by hand, one panel at a time.
What actually helps
Buy a reproduction
Entries for public-domain works link to a hand-painted reproduction. That link is this site's only income and it pays for the hosting and the editorial time. There is no subscription and no donation form.
Tell the desk what you know
If you have first-hand knowledge of a work — because it hangs in your church, or you have stood in front of it recently — that is information no database holds. It is the most valuable thing anyone sends here.
Nothing here requires signing up and nothing needs cancelling. If this catalogue helped you place a painting in the story it belongs to, it did what it was built to do.
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